Cooperative Baptists, ‘different kind of Baptist,’ meet at BJCC

Updated Jun 22, 2019; Posted Jun 21, 2019

The Rev. Paul Baxley, former pastor of First Baptist Church of Athens, Ga., serves as executive coordinator of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, which met in Birmingham from June 17-21, 2019. (Photo by Greg Garrison/AL.com)

A week after the larger Southern Baptist Convention met in Birmingham, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship held its annual general assembly this week at the Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex.

Hey, wait. Don’t these two groups know each other?

From 1979 to 1990, a battle raged in the Southern Baptist Convention between moderates and biblical inerrantists. They pointed fingers and called each other liberals or fundamentalists.

The conservative wing, supporters of strict and literal interpretation of the Bible, won the battle to control the nation’s largest Protestant denomination. They stacked Southern Baptist seminary trustee boards with conservatives who, among other things, believed that the Bible forbid women as senior pastors of churches.

By 1990, the moderates knew they had lost. By 1991, they had formed their own group, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, with former U.S. President Jimmy Carter as one of their leading voices.

Jimmy Carter Baptists

“Jimmy Carter is a visible, valued, respected leader in the larger Baptist family, in the CBF community,” said Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Executive Coordinator Paul Baxley. “He’s certainly still a role model, an example, a spiritual giant.”

Carter was not in Birmingham this week. The CBF wraps up its annual meeting tonight with a celebration of Baxley as the new executive. He was elected to the full-time staff position on Jan. 15.

The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship brought about 2,500 Baptists to the East Exhibition Hall this week, including 1,267 registered to vote on CBF business.

That pales in size to last week’s festivities, when the 14.8-million-member Southern Baptist Convention met at Legacy Arena, bringing 12,000 Baptists, more than 8,100 voting messengers, to town from 47,000 affiliated churches nationwide.

Organizers say it’s just a coincidence that the CBF is meeting the week after Southern Baptists in Birmingham. Both groups also met in Dallas last year a week apart.

Is there some kind of message there?

“That question has been asked by many people and I have no idea,” said the Rev. Kyle Reese of Jacksonville, Fla., elected to serve as moderator of the CBF for 2018-19.

“We are a very different kind of Baptist,” Reese said of the contrast in the two groups.

“I think as you look at the broader Baptist movement in the United States, we’d be foolish to think that what Southern Baptists do does not reflect on us,” Reese said. “We just need to be wise and humble about that and seek to go forward in a positive way. I’m not sure the world is really taking time to say, ‘Oh, you’re Baptist, what kind of Baptist are you?’”

CBF affirms women pastors

Although the CBF’s endorsement of women as senior pastors has been one of the hallmark differences between the two groups, about 94 percent of the 1,800 CBF-affiliated congregations still have men as pastors.

“The number of CBF churches that are served by women ministers is about six percent,” said Baxley, elected Jan. 15 to the full-time position of executive coordinator of CBF. “That’s much lower than it should be. It’s also considerably higher than it was five or 10 years ago. What we have to do is model it in our life together.”

All CBF churches are autonomous and make their own decisions on hiring pastors.

“When congregations ask us for recommendations in their pastor search process, we’ll send women as well as male candidates,” Baxley said. “Congregations have to do decide what they’re called to do. It is up to the local church, but we need to make sure we’re holding up examples of women who have gifts and calling and opportunity. We CBF Baptists have believed for a long time that God calls women as well as men to serve as pastors. We think scripture confirms that conviction. But we certainly still have lots of room to grow in living that out.”

Gay issue still divides

An issue that has proven troublesome for CBF is homosexuality.

After a decade-long prohibition on openly gay and lesbian employees, the governing board voted to rescind that policy. But it’s still divisive. “The position we’ve staked out is we believe in local church autonomy,” Reese said. “What each local church decides, we’re going to celebrate that. We’re not going to exclude anyone for what they do: Who they ordain, who they marry, who they love.”

The tricky part is how open to be in hiring policies in CBF agencies.

“Who we’ll call to serve in a position of leadership in our shared life, or send as field personnel, we’re still in a traditional place on that,” Baxley said.

“CBF congregations are in very different places on this issue,” Baxley said. “What we’re trying to do is be a Baptist community that welcomes any congregation that feels called to the ministry and trust them to make decisions about their own leadership. Most of our congregations still have a more traditional position on this. Because we have congregations in very different places, we think it’s really important to be a Baptist community that does not expel different perspectives, that has room to be in the presence of different convictions, especially if we see the spirit working through congregations that occupy many positions on many different things.”

Money shortfall

The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship adopted a $16.3 million budget Friday morning that anticipates a revenue shortfall and calls for dipping into reserves.

“We live on the powerful and dangerous currency of voluntary cooperation,” Baxley said. “Congregations give as they feel led by the spirit.”

The difficult discussions on human sexuality may have taken a toll, along with the transition in leadership from recently retired former Executive Coordinator Suzii Paynter to Baxley.

“We have to make sure we’re doing everything we can to create and sustain really powerful relationships with our congregations, and to serve all congregations within our movement,” Baxley said.

Even though Cooperative Baptists parted ways with the Southern Baptist Convention for many of their functions such as sending missionaries and educating ministers, getting Baptists to agree is still like herding cats.

“Obviously, in the wake of our conversations about matters of human sexuality, we had some congregations at very different places of conscience wonder if they could continue to be in relationship with us,” Baxley said. “We’ve also seen evidence that there are a lot of congregations that are in different places of conscience who have deepened their relationship with us. We’ve seen congregations over the last year significantly increase their support. They are not all one type or place theologically.”